Getting a HED start on the NHS Long Term Plan

Getting a HED start on the NHS Long Term Plan

If you work in primary care in Derbyshire, the chances are you’ve come across Health Education Derbyshire’s work. You might have attended one of our short CPD or workplace wellbeing courses, or even used some of the resources from our new online educational portal.

You could be forgiven though, if you’re not familiar with everything we do, or know just how much we offer General Practices and individual primary care practitioners in the region.

So, let’s start with a broad overview, designed to help you understand the breadth of our services, and how we might be able to help you and your team.

You’ve probably heard plenty about the NHS Long Term plan, which sets out its priorities for healthcare until 2029. This includes developing the organisation’s greatest strength, its people.

Health Education Derbyshire – or HED –  is a regional Training Hub working with Health Education England (HEE) to help our local General Practices and wider primary care teams meet this plan, to develop and nurture their workforce and deliver the best patient care for today and tomorrow.

It’s our mission to empower Derbyshire’s primary and social care workforce by developing accessible and inclusive educational opportunities and supporting recruitment and retention in our Primary Care services. We work in partnership with local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCGs) and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) – and the work we do benefits both employers and employees alike.

For employers, we’re the first point of information for new roles and we provide recruitment and training support for anyone in the field; from clinical specialisms to management and admin. And for employees, we provide access to a range of fully funded CPD and wellbeing courses as well as peer networking opportunities.

The work we do is broad and varied, and helps to:

• Support PCNs and CCGs to better understand their workforce needs, and how to meet them.
• Power the recruitment and training of educators, empowering them to provide high-quality teaching and learning environments for primary care staff.
• Support the recruitment, development and retention of primary care staff by developing impactful lifelong learning opportunities, including inter-disciplinary credentialing programmes which support staff in building flexible, varied, career development.
• Enable, support and embed “new roles” within primary care. This includes promoting primary care as an employment destination, working with educators across Derbyshire to promote the benefits of employment in the field.
• Provide funding support such as the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) for new roles, which cover 100% of the cost of employment for the General Practice – as well as funding for education and placement opportunities.

Our job is to support all employees, from those just starting out, to experienced practitioners. For people wishing to enter the primary care workforce, we:

• Provide new routes into nursing and other disciplines, including apprenticeships, associate courses, online qualification, and ‘earn and learn’ support.
• Expand the number of nursing and other undergraduate places available within reach of Derbyshire, ensuring that well-qualified candidates are supported and nurtured.
• Offer more funded clinical placements within Derbyshire’s Primary Care teams for student practitioners. We work with universities and employers alike, to facilitate placements, funding and on-going admin support for GP surgeries.

And, at the other end of the scale, we provide comprehensive Advanced Practice Support, for experienced clinicians who play a leadership role across Primary Care Networks (PCN) and in the Integrated Care Systems (ICS). Through our work in this area, we’re able to support Advanced Clinical Practitioners to earn Master's Level qualifications and get help with portfolio creation and assessment.

So, lots to consider in this broad view of how we support primary care across the region. There’s plenty more on our website including forthcoming events and opportunities to engage. And of course, feedback from you on the ground is invaluable. Do tell us what you think, what you need, and how things are going. We’d love to chat.